Lost her last election, in 2006, with 35% of the vote.
Aboriginal Affairs February 25th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, it is not the policy of the government to label anyone racist, but it sure would be welcomed by the government to have members on the other side show full support for the inherent right to self-government and all other aspirations of aboriginal peoples.
Social Security System January 31st, 1994
Mr. Speaker, we have looked to the experience of Germany, which has a great trades tradition. They are very good at apprenticeships. We enrol 124,000 Canadians a year; we only graduate 24,000. We know it is not working. We want to fix it. We are looking to Germany, which graduates about 400,000 a year. We know that they have the tradition. We are looking at revamping the whole image of trades and suiting it to modern needs. We are doing that and we intend to get the help of the hon. member who asked the question.
Social Security System January 31st, 1994
Mr. Speaker, we were given a clear mandate on the things in the Red Book we said we would do. In a very short time we have delivered on most of those promises. We have dealt with a number of issues. I have to say that has not been the case for the proposal that came forward from that hon. member's party.
We have a mandate. We have been given a clear mandate. In a sense, we have been given the authority to do the things that we have done in very little time. Basically we are not going to find a path through which we are going to nit-pick on specifics to stop us from undertaking fundamental change; broad, sweeping moves that will have the most fundamental impact on most Canadians, not to suit the political agenda of one particular political party.
Social Security System January 31st, 1994
Mr. Speaker, I am really happy that the representative for the Official Opposition, my hon. colleague, has risen to place a number of comments that would be questions. I will respond no less.
He indicated that party officials and leaders were not the ones who wanted this question of jurisdiction to be settled, it was the people who wanted it. Since the election I have been into Quebec twice and I have an idea of some of the things they want. They want leadership. The Official Opposition has been given the mandate to express leadership with a vision to creating jobs and an atmosphere that would be conducive to improving the economy. They have also been given the mandate to create better opportunities for Quebecers.
On my forays into Quebec, on the consultations with the youth service corps, the most popular elements of the five streams of the youth service corps program were the personal development and social development aspects of that program. That had the greatest interest because those were particular to the needs of the people who have the greatest need in Quebec.
We know if we get the co-operation for change, we are engaging in this particular approach to effect change fundamentally, a major restructuring, so that we can provide the opportunities that are lacking there. We are appealing to the Official Opposition for its co-operation.
Social Security System January 31st, 1994
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in support of the government's action plan for social reform announced by the hon. Minister for Human Resources Development.
First, I would like to preamble my speech with somewhat of a rebuttal to the statement made by the Leader of the Official Opposition. I wonder what century this leader lives in. Where does he come from? What direction is he coming from? What kind of visionary is this individual to speak in a duplicitous language that does not really relate to what I would call the honest bold truth about facts and figures relating to the transfer of programs or the overall social security programs? As a matter of fact, I am a little alarmed by the lack of substance in the speech given by the Leader of the Opposition.
If the truth were to be known it should be put as such. The federal contribution to social security programs in Quebec is $14.6 billion. This is 28 per cent of all national funds. As the Prime Minister said two weeks ago, Quebecers will lose if Ottawa transfers employment and training programs to Quebec. They will lose because the transfer will have to be done on a per capita basis. It will be a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. It will represent in fact $200 more in taxes for each Quebecer.
I would like to be heard and reiterate: Every Quebecer will have to pay $200 more in taxes. These are figures that we have worked through our officials. These figures are good. These figures are solid. They are substantive. They are validated.
Will that help the unemployed in Montreal, the young people looking for better training opportunities, many of whom I have met? No. If the Leader of the Opposition is honest with Quebecers he ought to tell them what will be the real cost of these transfers. Is he saying to the one million children living in poverty that we do not have the mandate or the leadership given to us by the citizens of this country to do something? Is he saying that the status quo is good enough? Well, we say no. We are the government and we say no.
I would like to address the House on what these social reforms will mean specifically for the young people of Canada. Canadians, aged 17 to 25 have as much to gain from the rebuilding of our social safety net as any other group in the country.
First I would like to address an important question, a question that I am sure many Canadians are asking themselves and will be asking themselves over the course of this rebuilding process: Why is the government reforming our social security programs? The answer is that this government wants to redistribute opportunity more broadly so that many people will have a decent standard of living and can build good lives for themselves and their families.
Not since the great depression have people in this country faced so many economic and social changes. The constant tinkering that has occurred over the years is failing to meet the realities of our young people, our work force, our society in the 1990s and beyond. The failings have become shockingly evident as we see the wasted, alienated and sometimes desperate state of many of our unemployed young people as well as many other Canadians.
We want to rebuild society for young Canadians who need help to get their lives back on track. Being the same, leaving things status quo is not going to do it. Sole parents, mostly young single mothers who want training to find work, cannot afford to lose their benefits to do that. Single young people on welfare who want to go back to school cannot find a job to support themselves while studying full time. As well there are drop-outs who need to improve their reading, writing and job search skills to enter the work force. In restoring security we want to offer employment training and education choices and restore hope to young people and restore hope to the future of our country.
Our long-term goal is to create a more productive economy by investing in the potential of our young people. To do all this we have to recognize the needs of young people who are on unemployment insurance or social assistance and want to break their dependency and do something with their lives.
Their needs could not be any clearer than what Statistics Canada reported last week and I quote: "Young persons were the big losers in the recent recession". With an unemployment rate of 17.7 per cent there were half a million fewer young people working in 1993 than before the recession.
Let us put aside this urgent problem of high youth unemployment for one moment to look at the changing nature of the work force. Forty per cent of young people are working part time. In 1992 youth unemployment was 1.6 per cent of the adult rate. Non-traditional jobs are becoming more common as people scramble to find contract work, part-time jobs or seasonal work to make some money in this changing global economy.
As the Minister of Finance stated last week we are moving away from a resource based economy to an information based economy. Youth are not developing the skills required for this information based economy. Young people have trained for jobs that are now in low demand, while jobs in emerging fields are looking for skilled workers.
Youth who have been taught traditional skills, such as trapping, farming and fishing now face a very bleak future. That is the situation not only for young people but all people in those fields of occupation are facing a very bleak endeavour. That is the situation for young people who have skills to market, but what about the young people who lack the most basic reading and math skills? We can call them early school leavers or we can call them drop-outs but they all have the same problem.
In some provinces the drop out rate is 30 per cent. In the north it can be as high as 95 per cent. These people do not even have the bare minimum qualifications for the workforce.
Companies that once demanded grade 9 or 10 for entry level jobs have raised the mark to grade 12. Chrysler's mini van plant in Windsor is an example. All young people have to wrestle with the same labour market forces but not all are equally prepared to combat them.
This inability to compete for some is the result of child poverty and neglect. One in five children live in poor families. That is over one million children. If we do nothing for fear of interfering with the agenda of other people and maintain the status quo, we are in a sense betraying the mandate we have been given. We are in a sense betraying the trust we have been given to rebuild hope and rebuild opportunities for those people.
Many are children of sole parents, mostly single mothers or teenage mothers who are caught in the poverty trap, dependent on social welfare without any opportunity to progress. Many young people with no education, no jobs and no future are turning to destructive social acts with harmful consequences for all Canadians. Schools, malls and neighbourhoods are dealing with gang violence and youth crime.
Reality is not a pretty picture. Reality is something we are grappling with, something we are prepared to work with, something worth taking a risk for, something to stick our necks for. That is the reality of many of these young and poor Canadians.
Young people are involved in robberies for clothing and other essentials. The link between economic hardship and crime is well known. Young people are bored, looking for an escape, anything to kill time. Some turn to drugs and alcohol for comfort. Some end up homeless on the streets.
The RCMP have a file of 41,000 missing children. They are not all missing. Some have joined the under-class of society. They end up on welfare, some of them locked in for life. We need to break the cycle of dependence. Young people all over the country are hurting. We cannot allow our young people to wallow in abject poverty and grow up in dead-end situations.
Indeed, Canadians all over the world reacted with horror at the sight of children sniffing gasoline in Davis Inlet. I know hon. members on the other side have made statements about their horror and shock at seeing this on television. What happened at Davis Inlet, Labrador is the worst symptom of all that is wrong when we abandon our young people. What hope do the children of Davis Inlet have for a better future if we do nothing for that fear, if we take no risk, if we maintain the status quo? What are we doing? Ultimately we are betraying the hopes of those people for a better future.
I have seen many similar desperate situations in the north throughout my life and in different centres across the country. If most Canadians only knew the kinds of nightmarish conditions young people are battling in some of our most populated areas, some of the inner-city poor. If most Canadians only knew the
horror of the conditions in which some young people are living in some of our most isolated communities then I think things might have a chance to improve.
The housing needs across Canada are severe. We need 11,000 units across this country. Twenty-five per cent of households in the Northwest Territories are in need. This is the highest proportion of households in need compared to the national average of 12 per cent. We need 3,400 units in the north under the severest conditions.
We have probably recorded the coldest month of January in Ottawa. It is minus 17 point something. Think of how cold it must be in the north. The north's population is young and gaining rapidly. The birth rate is almost twice the national average, yet 41 per cent of the children in the north under the age of 12 live in overcrowded housing. These conditions have a direct negative impact on their performance in school, their health, social development and their well-being.
Aboriginal people, as was indicated by my hon. colleague from Athabasca, have among other things the highest illiteracy rate and the lowest incomes of any other group. What does that spell for these young people? Only 3 per cent of aboriginal youth complete grade 12. In a nine-year period 154 students graduated from grade 12 in the Baffin region.
Where will the future leaders of the north come from if not from their own schools, their own communities, their own families with the proper support systems?
Society in a sense is paralysed, is immobilized by a myriad of problems that challenge us as legislators. We sit in the highest court in the land and we are charged with the responsibilities of making laws that will subsequently make life better for those who have the greatest need.
A chaotic family life is scarred by high drop-out rates, teenage pregnancy, physical and sexual abuse, solvent, drug and alcohol abuse, increased incidents of juvenile delinquency and suicide. In the north the suicide rate for youth between the ages of 15 and 24 is more than five times the Canadian average. I was told in Big Cove suicides are one a month. Can you imagine? One a month.
While the problems are magnified in the north, it is happening in southern cities too. The native population has grown an average of 41 per cent in Canada's 25 largest cities between 1986 and 1991. Although more and more are staying in school and graduating into jobs, the outlook is bleak for the majority.
Aside from high levels of unemployment, suicide and substance abuse, many face plain and simple discrimination, even if they try to get a job. Graduates from the Gabriel Dumont Institute who appeared before the aboriginal commission have spoken about the problems of finding employment, largely as a result of systemic racism and stereotyping of Métis people.
Some young people are quite able to guide themselves through the pitfalls because of the support of family, friends and strong self-esteem. What about those young people who need more help, who do not have that hand outstretched to them? What about the neediest of the needy?
In the past, all too often we have sent them to the unemployment line or the welfare line and left them there and tried to forget. Our social security system has become a net that entraps rather than liberates them for greater opportunities. We never foresaw such a multitude of social problems affecting the ability of our young people to make a successful move from school to work. The result is that young people are more dependent on social assistance.
The Province of Newfoundland has found that UI dependence is beginning at a very early age. One out of two 19-year-olds is on unemployment insurance at some time during the year. The cycle of dependency must end. As Geraldine Kenney-Wallace, the President of McMaster University has said, "in order to compete globally we must raise the literacy and numeracy skills in general".
We have to do more. We have to do it better. We all have something to contribute toward finding solutions. Our government is prepared to make a commitment to the young people of Canada. The Ministry of Health is working on an innovative program and many others, such as the aboriginal head-start program. Skills and nutrition and parenting are taught so that the children will begin their lives in an improved atmosphere. This is pro-active; this is progressive. This is something where, before we create the problems, we will have created an atmosphere that will avoid them, an atmosphere where parents have self-esteem that they can pass on to their children.
Our government will take the renewed sense of worth of these children and ensure that programs are instituted to keep these children in school.
The Canada Youth Service Corps will help unemployed youth to discover a fresh approach to learning and building self-esteem. The youth service corps will provide young people with skills to enable them to begin their career path.
Not only that, we also have the national youth apprenticeship program that will garner a lot more attention in months to come.
This again will help young Canadians to develop the skills needed in the growing economic sectors, with business and labour setting the standards.
These programs, along with others, will provide youth with opportunities to compete and better themselves.
I would like to conclude by saying that in the aboriginal society that I come from there are three philosophies that are specific to the success of how people help one another. One, is fundamental change. There is a word called guli gogho agudegha, because we need real change in a big way, fundamental change. It cannot happen without that.
The other thing is working together. Dene tuluh keh egalats edegha: we are going to work on our future path together. It is only by that we can succeed. This is the path that we all come out together and work on. It is our future path.
The third is our destiny, dene galé. We all have one, whether we are aboriginal or non-aboriginal.
I say to my colleagues, that our destiny is brought to us through our hands, through our hearts, through our minds, and we cannot do it alone. This thing we call dene tuluh, our future road, our path, is one that is done together; it is one that comes together. Through each individual effort we will make something for the people of our country.